A gun!!!
I play video games. For an approaching middle-age guy, I’m reasonably competent. When I play games like Halo or Call of Duty online, I’m usually somewhere in the middle of all the players. Occasionally I’m near the bottom and on rare, freak occasions I’m near the top.
The total number of people I’ve shot in real life is at least 1 less than former V.P. Dick Cheney.
When I first saw the commercial for the latest Call of Duty videogame, Black Ops, I must admit I smiled. It was cleverly done. It wasn’t like most videogame commercials that show mainly gameplay footage or cut-scenes from the game. Instead it had some celebrities and some regular joes playing as themselves on a bombed-out battlefield shooting shotguns, rocket launchers, machine guns, miniguns and pistols.
Total number of people actually shot on screen in 60 seconds? Zero.
Amount of blood shown? Not a single drop.
People pretending they’ve been hit? None.
The ad ends with the tagline “There’s a soldier in all of us.”
All in all, a cleverly done commercial which gives you a glimpse of what you can do in the game.
ESPN however, is appalled. Why? Because Laker Kobe Bryant is one of the celebrities in the game featured in the ad.
Cue the standard story about how Kobe Bryant’s a role model (still, after that whole rape thing?) and him firing a gun in a videogame ad somehow communicates to kids that it’s OK to shoot people in a the real world.
This is nothing more than the stupidity of knee-jerk liberal elitists (but I repeat myself) shocked that there are guns in the world and that videogames exist that allow people to pretend they’re soldiers.
And yet, these ESPN hosts want the NBA commissioner to do something about it.
It’s funny, it doesn’t seem like a slow news week.
You can see the commercial after the break.
One comment on “A gun!!!”
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I am also an xbox gamer. I also am middle of the pack in a COD online game. I have played my share of zombie fests, HALO, Red Dead Redemption, etc. But I do all of that after my 3 year old daughter has gone to sleep. When I sit down with her on a Sunday to watch football, I take exception to her being subjected to the network drama commercials that depict blood, murder, bodies, etc. I have gotten to the point where I no longer allow her to watch football with me on Sundays and it has taken my desire to watch the game down a couple of notches. But I did not mind her seeing the Black Ops commercial specifically because there is no blood, no death, etc. Strangely, there has been no hue and cry against the commercials for shows that contain any variation of C, S, and I.